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Wizard Or Financial Kervorkian?

Think we have it rough right now? Could you imagine what the financial state of America under Rattner would be like?

[Policing Wall Street]

In 2007 Steve Rattner –until recently President Obama’s Auto Tsar— financial Wunderkind, convinced his partners at Quadrangle Group, to purchase Alpha Media for $250 million. Alpha Media consisted of three publications, Maxim, Blender and Stuff. Quadrangle put up $100 million and borrowed $150 million. Rattner performed his spread sheet calculations on a super computer, rather than a simple calculator, and determined that the ad base of Maxim alone would be sufficient to enable Quadrangle to pay off the $150 million of debt. Wrong.The financial tsunami hit. Stuff was closed in 2007. Blender was shut down in 2008. Maxim has suffered a precipitous decline in ad pages. The result: Quadrangle defaulted on its debt. Now the new owner of Maxim is Cerberus; it bought Alpha Media. You remember Cerberus? They bought Chrysler and refused to give Congress a list of the partners in Cerberus. Rattner, the now former Auto Tsar, had been in charge of the bailout of Chrysler. Had Hillary become President, this “genius” Rattner might have become Treasury Secretary.There are many people, due to media hype, that believe Rattner is a finance wizard. He has been a financial adviser or Guru to the likes of Hillary Clinton, Arthur Sulzberger, and Mike Bloomberg, to name a few.Yet, Rattner seems to leave wrecks wherever he goes. Think we have it rough right now? Could you imagine what the financial state of America under Rattner would be like?